Title: Four Times Stephen Was A Good Boy, And One Time He Did Even BetterSeries: TDS/TCRRating: NC-17Characters/Pairings: Jon/"Stephen", a special guest starWarnings: The first three are various D/s-charged puppy-play sex scenes.Disclaimer: Two.

For the Report characters: They and their universe are property of Stephen Colbert, the other Report writers, and of course Viacom. Not mine. Sue me not, please.

And for the real people, the poem:Please, make no mistake:these people aren't fake,but what's said here is no more than fiction.It only was writbecause we like their witand wisecracks, and pull-squints, and diction.We don't mean to quibble,but this can't be libel;it's never implied to be real.No disrespect's meant;if you disapprove, then,the back button's right up there. Deal.

Jon dug the butter knife into the jar and carved out another crescent-moon slab of Jif. "Just sandwiches."

Stephen shuffled across the linoleum and leaned over his shoulder. "You're having peanut butter and...peanut butter?"

"Nah, PB&J. But you see," he said brightly, scraping the substance in question across a second slice of bread, "if you put peanut butter on both sides, the jelly doesn't soak through and make it all soggy."

"That's very clever, Jon. Did you think of that all by yourself?"

Jon's face fell. "Well, I thought it was neat," he mumbled.

"Uh-huh. Sure." Stephen leaned into his neck, then slid one hand along Jon's sleeve down to the wrist before wrapping his fingers around the handle. "Be careful. Peanut butter gets messy, you know."

"BLTs can be messy," protested Jon feebly, as Stephen twisted the knife out of his hand. "There's the grease. And...tomato juice! That stuff will get everywhere if you let it."

"Yeah, but peanut butter...." Letting him go, Stephen leaned his elbows on the granite countertop, twirling the knife slowly in his fingers. "It's, you know, sticky. You have to put in a lot of work to get it all clean."

With that, he ran his tongue roughly up the length of the flat, lapped a few times, then took the whole blade into his mouth.

"You know," stuttered Jon, silently thanking his lucky stars that he hadn't been cutting beef a minute ago, "the circus pays good money for people with that kind of talent."

Stephen worked the knife for a few more heart-pulsing seconds before drawing it, wet and shining, from his lips. "My favorite part was always the lion tamers."

It would have taken a far stronger mind not to go fuzzy at a display like that. By the time he finally made it to the kitchen table, Jon found himself staring blankly at his plate, as if expecting advice to appear like the face of Christ on the topmost piece of bread.

Stephen, now on all fours, padded nonchalantly over to the corner and started lapping at his water dish. Any decision Jon made was going to have to happen before he started on the food heaped in the bowl beside it. (Cocoa Puffs. Stephen's penchant for canine realism only went so far.)

Oh, the hell with it. Jon swiped a finger along the inside of his sandwich, then unzipped his fly.

"Golly," he said loudly, as Stephen lifted his head from the water. "I seem to have spilled something on myself. What ever shall I do?"

Turning, Stephen trotted a few steps towards him and sniffed the air.

The hope in the man's eyes was kicking Jon's heart up a notch already. Catching his breath, he patted his leg and whistled. "Here, boy!"

He'd barely gotten the last word out before Stephen had bounded across the kitchen and slipped under the table.

two: raining cats and...

"I'm home!" called Jon, shaking the rain from his umbrella. It hadn't made a whole lot of difference, thanks to the driving winds that hadn't left an inch of him untouched, from the hair plastered to his scalp to the shoes caked with mud. He was cold, he was miserable, and he probably smelled like a wet—

"Are you alone?" came a voice from upstairs.

"Uh, yeah," replied Jon, hanging up his sopping coat and stepping gingerly out of those shoes.

"How are your clothes doing?"

Jon hooked one finger under the bunched rim of his left sock and began peeling it from his cold foot. "How do you expect?" he yelled. "They're a mess! Going straight in the laundry. What, you can't come say hi because you'll afraid the sloppy will rub off on you?"

No answer.

With a sigh, Jon pulled off the other sock and took a few steps along the rug. Not the softest thing in the world, but at least it was marginally warmer. And, hey, his damp sleeves were still un-damp enough to sop up the trickles of water that kept running down his forehead. That was something, right?

An erratic thumping from upstairs broke in on his train of thought. "Everything okay up there?"

Again, no answer. Jon started forward in earnest now, trying not to jump to any sinister conclusions—

—and then Stephen came leaping down the steps, stark naked except for a red leather collar, making his descent on two legs until he reached the bottom, at which point he dropped to all fours and pounced, hands pawing at the hem of Jon's sweatshirt and hips pumping enthusiastically against his thigh.

Jon stumbled backwards from sheer astonishment. Somehow he held onto the presence of mind to land himself on the floor without falling there. Somehow, too, Stephen's eyes stayed locked on his the whole time, glowing with love, the bottom half of his face split into a delighted grin.

"Happy to see you," he chanted, nuzzling Jon's stomach with his chin and rocking the rest of his body against Jon's legs, like it wasn't about the frottage at all, like it was all part and parcel of a craving to just touch Jon, in as many ways as possible. "Happy to see you. Happy to see you...."

"Stephen, my Stephen," panted Jon, "so, so glad to be back."

three: shaggy dog story

With the exception of his head, Stephen was much too lightly furred to ever need a really thorough scrubbing. The idea hadn't even occurred to Jon until the day he found a rough-bristled brush sitting pointedly next to his aftershave.

Later that same weekend that they found time to get to Stephen's favorite park, the one where he could catch Frisbees to his heart's content without looking terribly out-of-place to anyone who happened to stumble through the trees. He came home sweaty, dusty, and grass-stained, still bouncing with energy as Jon hustled him into the tub.

At first Jon tried to follow their usual pattern, taking the opportunity to lavish calm, detailed attention on Stephen's pliant seal-like form. Apparently "pliant" was not in the cards today. The bathroom rugs, Jon's clothes, and anything else directly in the line of fire ended up spattered with dirt and suds.

"Fine," he sighed, as Stephen panted at him, to all appearances blissfully ignorant of his own rambunctiousness. "You need to be wrangled today? Because I can wrangle, sir. I can wrangle with the best of them."

Stephen, unrepentant, licked his nose.

"That's it," declared Jon, and grabbed the brush.

At the sight, Stephen perked up — and then Jon actually bore down on him, making him yelp in surprise. The bristles hadn't been at all broken in, and a quick dip in the water wasn't nearly enough to soften them up before they were raked harshly across his back.

For the first few seconds Jon's arm ran on autopilot, using the broad, no-nonsense strokes that a long-time bachelor with his own place learns to take when wielding a brush, water sloshing up to the edges of the tub as the man in it was shoved back and forth. Only after several swipes did he catch himself, doing a double-take at the wide pink diagonal stripes he had left on Stephen's skin.

Dipping his chin into the water, Stephen whuffed a layer of bubbles out of his way and looked reproachfully up at Jon. "I'm still dirty."

"R-right," stammered Jon. "Of course. Hold still."

After planting his paws on the edge of the tub and resting his head on them, Stephen held very still indeed, except for a few irrepressible wriggles, while Jon gave the brush a thorough lathering up.

He started slower this time, scrubbing in gentle circles, trying at first to avoid the rapidly-fading red marks. But Stephen's continued outbursts of wriggling made that impossible, and he only calmed down when Jon settled into an indiscriminate back-and-forth rhythm. For a brief moment Jon wondered, and not for the first time, who was training who.

Not that he minded. Frankly, it was hard to mind anything when he had Stephen rocking back and forth beneath him, wet and slippery and making little whimpering noises with every thrust, and if the subtext here was rapidly becoming text as far as Jon's pants were concerned, well, a quick glance through the waves told him that Stephen had gone there long ago.

He picked up the pace, throwing his whole back into the effort, and if he was going to be sore in the morning, well, it was worth it.

four: that dog won't hunt

"Not sure we should go for those," muttered Jon under his breath, while Stephen gazed longingly at the rack of chew toys. "They're engineered for actual canine teeth, and yours, uh—"

"Jon?" broke in a female voice. "Jon Stewart?"

Mentally readying his poorly-lit-fan-photo smile, Jon looked up. In the next instant, all forced emotions scattered from his mind. "No way. Tracey McShane?"

"He remembers me!" exclaimed Tracey with mock disdain, before breaking into a grin that could stop traffic. "How've you been? Fame and fortune treating you well?"

"Can't complain," admitted Jon sheepishly, then set down his basket, the better to let her pull him into a fervent hug. "You look great. How've you been? Still acting? Still doing the crosswords?"

"Never miss the crosswords. The acting, well — would you believe I'm a vet now?" She laughed at Jon's poorly hidden surprise. "Yeah, not exactly an intuitive career path."

"Sort of. I decided to take home this rescue cat, we were going to put him down if nobody volunteered, he has colon issues — I'll let you imagine the details," she added with a wry smile, as Jon made a face. "How about you?"

"Me? Well, uh, I do this show, you probably haven't seen it, it's on basic cable...."

Tracey whacked him playfully on the shoulder. "Smartass."

"That's why they pay me the big bucks."

"And modest, too! No, why are you here? And does it have something to do with the friend you haven't bothered to introduce yet?"

And wasn't that a kick to the gut. "Oh, god, I'm sorry," groaned Jon, turning to Stephen, who, to his relief, did not appear to be on the verge of biting someone. "Stephen, this is Tracey, we were in a movie together a while back. Tracey, this is Stephen. He's — uh—"

"I'm the friend who knows about dogs," supplied Stephen. "He has a new dog, so I'm helping him pick stuff out."

"Funny ears," put in Jon, trying to get into the swing of things. Stephen trod on his foot.

"Well, I'll let you get back to it," smiled Tracey, then pressed a card into Jon's hand. "The office. Your dog ever gets sick, or needs some shots, give us a call. Or, listen, if you want to have lunch some time, catch up — if I'm not in the office, leave a message and I'll get back. All right?"

"Got it." Jon squeezed her hand. "It was great to run into you again."

Tracey fairly glowed at him before scooping up her own basket. "See you around."

Her hips and ponytail swung as she walked away, and Jon allowed himself a moment — just a moment — of wistful memory for the way they moved, the way her hair tossed when she laughed.

"You used to sleep with her," hissed Stephen.

Jon tried not to feel like the cat who swallowed the canary. Of course he had dated people before this — this whatever-it-was. He had a right to that, no matter how jealous Stephen got over it. "Uh, yes."

"And you'll notice," continued Stephen pointedly, "that I did not snipe at her, yell at her, growl at her, give her the cold shoulder, or challenge her to even the tiniest duel to the death."

"Stephen, I'm not going to crank the AC for the whole office just so you can wear a—"

Jon cut himself off. He wasn't going to get into one of Stephen's nonsense debates, that's what he was not going to do. Not only was he terrible at them to begin with, but Stephen was still jet-lagged, which put Jon at a disadvantage.

Instead, he bit his lip and slipped into what he still thought of as 'the game', never mind that a big part of the appeal was how it gave Stephen permission to be real. "Come on, boy. Give it here."

Stephen took a step back and whined, hunching his shoulders and pulling the flaps of the deerstalker down almost to his chin.

"Hey, hey, it's okay." Jon held forth a hand, not grabbing or patting, just offering it up.

After studying the offering for a moment, Stephen dropped to the ground and shuffled forward, until he was close enough to stretch his head out and lick Jon's knuckles. "'M sorry."

"B-but—" Sitting back on his haunches, Stephen gave the deerstalker a timid shove backwards, just enough to reveal the fuzzy point of his newly shorn widow's peak. "It's not silky. So you won't like it any more."

Jon couldn't help it. He burst out laughing.

"S-Stephen!" he panted at last, teary with mirth, unable even to muster up any guilt at the other man's wounded eyes. "I've been waiting to get my hands on that hair of yours all week! Get over here."

Stephen scooted tentatively forward, then yelped in surprise as Jon fell upon him, tossing aside the hat and using both hands to rub his new layer of fuzz with gusto. At first he cowered under the onslaught, but Jon's touch was nothing less than loving, and slowly he built up the courage return the affection: pawing at Jon's chest, nosing his neck, tentatively headbutting him under the chin.

They ran out of steam sooner rather than later, Jon backing up against the armchair for support while Stephen slumped comfortably across his chest and trailed off along the floor.

"I don't love your hair, Stephen," he remarked.

Stephen let out an indignant whine.

"Oh, you know what I mean." Two of Jon's fingertips had settled on a patch of fuzz that had once been a cowlick, humming back and forth as they absorbed the memory of this new feel. "We can still do the puppy thing like this. I'll pet what's left of your hair and call you a good boy and so on and so forth. But I'm not with you because of your silky hair. I'm with you because, when you're not pretending to be a dog, you go out and do ridiculous brilliant things like fly your crew halfway around the world and spend the week in a war zone, all in the name of supporting our troops. I'm with you because you're a good man."

It was a few moments before Stephen answered: not in the breathless and almost cartoonish puppy-voice, but in very nearly his natural cadences. "Jon?"

"Yeah?"

With a subtle shift of position, Stephen's irreverent sprawl turned into something that could have passed for a traditional embrace. "It isn't...only...your dog that adores you with every fiber of his being."